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AIXpert Blog is about the AIX operating system from IBM running on POWER based machines called Power Systems and software related to it like PowerVM for virtualisation, PowerVC for Deploying VM's and PowerSC for security plus performance monitoring and nmon

Also Fedora 20 does not install on POWER6 machine :-( The installer crashes to the open firmware prompt.

3) On the HMC created a virtual machine (LPAR)
-With 2 shared uncapped CPU cores, 8 GB RAM added virtual SCSI to the two VIOS and the virtual network

4) Allocate and connected 64 GB of VIOS Shared Storage Pool 4 disk space
- Nice as this is dual path to both VIOS
- Nice as VIOS SSP4 does the mirroring at the back end
- Nice as I don't need to learn how to do mirroring at the Linux level
- Nice as it means the I/O is spread across 16 LUNs on my V7000's
- i.e. KISS at the Linux end and low man-power

5) Connected the Fedora 20 virtual DVD to the VM

6) Used putty to the HMC and then ran the vtmenu command and selected the Fedora 20 VM
- Never ever try installing Linux in text mode using VTERM

7) One the HMC Activated the LPAR in stop at SMS mode

8) Checked that it would first try booting the virtual DVD - which was true and as expected to I exited SMS (x1 Return) and let it boot from virtual DVD.

9) Spinning propeller for 2 seconds and wait 20 seconds then we get to the installer.

Then you get to

Installing

10) Now the agro starts - I type Return to select the Install option and get

11) If you select Start VNC it assume your network is running VNC. Well that might work in your bedroom on the home network with your Internet providers router doing DHCP or might be OK if your at work network admin likes DHCP but I find DHCP is fairly rare in a large computer room of servers. We don't have it in my computer room for that reason. Sorry, Fedora 20 development guys but that assumption SUCKS!!

12) I started a text mode based install and you get to a screen with seven questions need answering.

Try as I did it reports "one of the spokes has not been completed" - I could not work it out. Having completed the VNC install later it might have been some thing to do with having to double confirm the target disks but it was frustrating and a total road block to me. I wasted more than an hour "banging my head on the wall" - it did not help. So I thought lets revisit the VNC install.

13) Back to a VNC install but with no DHCP.
There is pitiful documentation in this area 95% of examples just say add "vnc vncpassword=abc1234" to the boot prompt and there you go.
a) what boot prompt?
b) that works only for DHCP as I need to tell it the static IP address, netmask etc.
c) the syntax for other options is well hidden and certainly NOT in the Fedora Install manual pages
Eventually I find the options and syntax here https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda_Boot_Options?rd=Anaconda/Options

14) Back to

I notice the 'e' to EDIT option and for the first "Install Fedora" entry get to the following screen:

Now it might be obvious to you Linux guru's but this is the new fangled boot option.

You can tell that because ..... no clues like "Boot options" or "boot:" anywhere but you recall some decade ago typing things like "vmlinux"!

So where do you now add the VNC options - well 15 attempts later this works.

Yep totally unbelievable to me. Use the cursor keys, add a space and bung it in the middle and you don't type that "/" at the end of the line.

To help you get that right you can cut and past this line: vnc vncpassword=abc12345 ip=9.137.62.23 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=9.137.62.1

Anywhere else just messes up the boot. It is a good job on Power I can force reboot from the HMC and get back to try again in 15 seconds or I would not have the patience to find a combination that works.

You will have to use your IP addresses, of course but a worked example it worth 10,00 pages of manual.

You use the Control+x to start the install and then start your VNC viewer from your workstation to complete the VNC graphical install.

Selected the only disk - if used before you have to fiddle about a but to get it to use the whole disk and destroy old disk partitions:

The default is a GNOME Desktop - NOT GOOD - this is a server machine So I selected a Infrastructure Server.

Not 100% sure what that is but it is much better than a workstation option. I did not go selecting any other fancy options but Basic Web server, MariaDB (MySQL but not from Oracle), Admin tools, C development look useful as a starting point.

And finally the network setting - I hope these will be then used after the install so I will not need to set them by hand.

If you get the network settings badly wrong the installer will dynamically set them and the VNC sessions will fail with errors in the Console putty window. It is a restart from scratch at that point.

I set the full hostname = bottom left and then clicked Configure = bottom right to add DNS - not sure if this will get setup on the disk.

Back to the main panel with everything ready:

Next click on the Begin Installation

What!! More questions while it installs:

This time easy ones for root password and to create your first user:

Finally, finally its installed and ready for a reboot:

Now the VNC Viewer session will stop - so close it and back to the putty terminal console.

16) Logon after reboot from the disk

The Virtual Machine will restart, lots of Fedora Linux messages fly up the screen and then you see:

I have seen a number of error messages on this terminal console but just ignored them or used a different direct putty session as it then gets no messages. And I can immediately connect to the server so the network connection setting were saved.

Unfortunately, no VNCserver is installed by default.

17) Update Fedora 20 ready for use

We need to make sure Fedora is now up to date - the DVD may have been release months ago.

This assumes your virtual machine network has direct access to the Internet. Anyone got an idea what to do if that is not available???

Logging as root and type: yum repolist

If this works as below the you have Internet access - if not check network gateways, DNS and a dozen other issues.

The repositories are defined in the files in /etc/yum.repos.d/ xxxx

I get :

So lets start the Update to get ... up to date!

As root: yum update

You will have to confirm to let it go ahead and it has found hundreds of packages the dependencies that nee updating:

601 downloads and updates later I get a nice "Completed!" message - this was all online and no hints a reboot would be a good idea. I assume no kernel changes where made.

18) VNC Server

Unfortunately, this is not a default install for the Infrastructure Server. But what is the package name?

As root type: yum list *vnc* | grep server

So some "£$%&#@!" on the tiger VNC team decided to hid the vncserver package by adding a hyphen in the middle. Thanks mate!

As root user, type: yum install tigervnc-server
and y to agree the update.

We also need the twm Window manager, so install it now: yum install twm

And I found we need xterm too: yum install xterm

Next stop the firewall with: systemctl stop firewalld.service
Be aware there are risks involved with this disabling but firewall is a difference topic

Now run the VNC server

Set the VNC password for the current user: vncpasswd

Then run the VNC server: vncserver

Check it is running with: ps -ef | grep vnc

The you can connect via your vncviewer as normal

And it all works great:

Notes:

Not seen this before but the hostname seems to come from /etc/hostname

yum install nmon works Hurray!! But it is the older version 14h. version 14i has been out a year and very recommended by me as there are loads of fixes and some new functions too.

I hope that helps others get started quickly, cheers Nigel (mr_nmon) Griffiths